Anna Bishop is not a normal 13-year-old. For starters, she lives on a farm some 70 kilometres outside Gunnedah, in Mullaley, she speaks with a pronounced American accent (her mother, Carolyn, was born in America) and, despite the remoteness of her existence, she has emerged as one of Australia's most promising tennis players.
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The breath of her life experiences (she travels to the US once a year to see relatives and train) means she presents as exceeding poised for someone so young, her words measured.
She wants to pursue tennis as a career, including securing a tennis scholarship at a US university [she has Australian and American citizenship]. However, she views the sport as more than just an athletic expression: it is also helping to shape her as a person.
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"I started playing because I love the sport, and my dad and mum encouraged me to do a sport from a young age to learn lots of life lessons that I can't really gain from anywhere else other than sport," she said. (Carolyn met her husband, James, when she worked for the ANZ Bank in Melbourne. She had previously worked for the bank in New York.)
Anna continued: "Sport gives me lots of control and lots of focus, especially with my school work. It gives me lots of different emotions ... you can be happy, then sad; you can be excited, but then really upset with a close loss. This is all setting me up for my life; how to handle pressure and special school situations."
Anna's pursuit of the best she can be, athletically, scholarly and as an all-round person, involves an exhausting amount of travelling for her and her parents. Quite often successful athletes speak of how their ascents were underpinned by their parents' commitment to their cause. Anna's parents embody that.
Living so far way from town can be an adversity sometimes, but I make it work it work.
- Anna Bishop
She attends Carinya Christian School in Gunnedah, a round trip of more than 120km (most days she is ferried by her mother). And last year the family travelled more than 20,000km for tournaments, plus more for local and regional competitions. Carolyn said the average distance the family travelled to junior tournament last year was 566km.
"Living so far way from town can be an adversity sometimes," Anna said, "but I make it work."
Anna is the result of all that sacrifice. She will soon compete for the second consecutive year in the December Showdown, in Melbourne, a tournament that recognises and promotes the country's best junior talent. This month she competed in her second consecutive nationals (she was knocked out in the second round, but was young for her age group), while she will represent NSW Country at the Foundation Cup in Melbourne in January.
Another highly promising tennis talent, Anna's Gunnedah Tennis Club clubmate, Vitorio Sardinha, will also compete at the December Showdown. Carolyn said they qualified for the event via their 2019 results, with only 20 direct entries into it.
Anna said: "I do want to see how far I will go [in tennis]. The main goal's college [in the US] at the moment ... But I'm just very happy to see how my tennis keeps progressing, and I still love the sport [she has been playing it some seven years]. So, hopefully it goes far."
